Perlbrew install perl takes forever, just install already-compiled perl

Question

perlbrew install perl compiles and runs all tests which takes forever on my machine to install (>60 mins). Is it possible to install pre-built-and-test-run perl using perlbrew like apt-get does for linux packages to save time?

Chantey

You can do perlbrew install --notest which saves a considerable amount of time, if you're confident that nothing will go wrong. Good use of the -j flag will also make things go faster if you have multiple cores. – Pinon

perlbrew install -j 5 --notest perl-5.20.0 completes in under 2 minutes on my machine. – Pinon

Regarding @hobbs' "if you're confident that nothing will go wrong"... assuming that you've successfully built a Perl before, and assuming you're installing a stable release of Perl, and assuming that your OS and machine architecture are not incredibly esoteric, then you can be fairly confident that nothing is going to go wrong, and it should be safe to skip testing Perl. – Abolish

This seems like a perfectly reasonable question to me. Voting to re-open. – Siracusa

@Siracusa I don't get why it is unclear either, voting to reopen. – Fewness

Answer 1

perlbrew by its nature is going to do a build that is appropriate for your OS and architecture. You have to rely on your OS vendor for pre-built perls, which is as it should be.

That said, you can speed things up considerably with the -n flag to skip the tests. If you have multiple cores, the -j flag will build things in parallel where possible.

Try timing perlbrew install -n -j 5 perl-5.20.0 and see how it compares to the default method.

Siracusa

Answer 2

No, not using perlbrew (that's not its purpose), but you could using apt-get, yum, rpm, etc (that is their purpose).

Wessels